66 SOCIAL SCIENTIST from their ancestors a way of life and a world outlook. Capitalism considerably hastened the pace of historical development: "The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together/51 Yet it was only in the 20th century that this acceleration acquired a qualitatively new character. At the present time within the space of one generation economic and social changes and historical events take place that formerly would have been spread across whole centuries. The founders of Marxism attributed tremendous importance to technological change in the history of mankind, regarding such changes as the source of profound and irreversible social transformations, as the central factor in social revolution. Engels pointed out, for instance, that the industrial revolution of the late 18th and early 19th century was more significant for mankind in view of its social consequences than any political event and ideological movements that were taking place at the same time. In a speech delivered on the occasion of the jubilee celebrations of The Peoples Paper in 1856, Karl Marx stated that the so-called revolutions of 1848 were only minor episodes in the history of the 19th century: "Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than [even citizens Barbes, Raspil and Blanqui." Similarly, we have every reason to maintain that the technological revolution of our age has social 'consequences of a far greater significance than the political events of 1968 in France or the United States of America^ and the atomic energy, computers, space rockets and artificial satellites are revolutionists of a more dangerous character than Reich, Roszak, Revel or all put together. In his book World Without War the leading British scientist J D Bernal (incidentally it was he who first used the term "technological revolution" for the rapid acceleration of technological change in this age) has drawn up an interesting diagram to illustrate the basic changes in the social division of labour over the course of history. Until the 18th century the majority of the gainfully employed population was concentrated in agriculture or in other primary industries based on the direct utilization of nature^s natural wealth. The industrial revolution gave rise to a mass transfer of labour power to the manufacturing industrks, that is, to the secondary sphere of economic activity. Nowadays the technological revolution is showing a new shift in the distribution of the gainfully employed population between different spheres of